11 Characters (Or Less)

A new usability study done by Jakob Nielsen confirms the important of the first 2 words or about 11 characters of a website’s links and headlines.

On Web and intranet pages, lists occur in many places, including:

Search engine results pages (SERP)

Lists of current or archived articles, headlines, press releases, and other news items

Product listings

Table of contents

FAQ pages

Bulleted or numbered lists, checklists, task steps on a help page or job aid, etc.

Users typically see about 2 words for most list items; they’ll see a little more if the lead words are short, and only the first word if they’re long. The testing revealed that the best links follow principles for effective Web content.

Use plain language

Use specific terminology

Follow conventions for naming common features

Front-load user- and action-oriented terms

Poor link characteristics:

Bland, generic words

Made-up words or terms

Starting with blah-blah and deferring the information-carrying text to the end